Audrey Kang from Lightning Bug on Kites

Tension and looseness

23 dec. 2021

By Audrey Kang

Photograph by Ingmar Chen

Brooklyn shoegaze band Lightning Bug released their latest album, A color of the sky, back in June via Fat Possum. In a press release, singer Audrey Kang summed up the album, “I want listeners to explore their own inner world. It is about learning to trust yourself, to be deeply honest with yourself, and to know how self-acceptance produces a form of selfless love. In this guest blog post for Under the radar, Kang now shares the vital life lessons she learned while flying kites with her friends.

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I used to stroll through Mercer Books, a small bookstore near Washington Square Park, after my shift at a nearby restaurant. It would be around midnight, I would be exhausted, sweaty and irritable, but when I was riding my bike near the illuminated neon sign of “Books”, I would stop and walk in.

Most nights Keith was at the checkout and his friend Yuzo was there with his dog Lulu. Sweet Lulu has always greeted me like a long lost playmate. She ran between the shelves with her tongue as I ran my eyes across the spines of the books, feeling the universes stretching out to touch me, if only I had reached out too.

The magic of Mercer Books meant that a book would grab me just when I needed it. Over the past few months, I was on a quest for growth and change, but kept finding myself mired in conflict after conflicts of my own creation. One night at the bookstore, Making and flying kites fell into my hands. So it was time for me to do a kite.

I went to San Francisco to see my friends Jillian and Peter, who had recently been kite flying. The three of us set about searching for the materials listed in the book, finding silk fabric, twine, and various lengths of wood. Then Jillian went to her shift at the bakery, and Peter and I got down to business.

Usually Peter is reserved. To my satisfaction, I am silent. So we worked in a felted harmony, dipping wooden rods in the bath water until they became soft and supple in our hands, coaxing them into bows held in shape by a knotted string, stretching the fabric on the twine and wood skeleton. In the evening, we had finished our kite, magnificent for us in the form of a butterfly with blue wings. Now all he had to do was fly.

That night we drove up to a windblown hill that overlooked the bay. San Francisco was attractively twinkling in the distance. Excited by the sight, I launched our kite into space, after which it floated for a charged moment and came back directly like a magnet to me. So as not to be discouraged, I threw the kite away from me with all my strength. Let’s go. I tried a more passive release… the line slackened and the kite veered toward the ground like a wounded bird. After an hour of watching our beloved kite crumble, I felt ready to admit defeat – maybe there was a flaw in its construction preventing it from taking flight.

Instead, I stopped my insane throw. I held the kite in my hands, looking for the secret. I felt the wind breathe against its surface, the push and pull awakening parts of me that I didn’t even know were asleep. His wings fluttered. Waiting for.

With sudden animation, the kite leaped out of my grip. The line tightened, vibrating with life; the kite flew higher, tending towards greater freedom. it was flying! And I started to understand.

All individual life is a struggle for its most intimate fulfillment and growth. If you ever let yourself go, then you too will fall to the ground like a dead thing. If you push too hard against yourself, you will either come back to the origin or tear yourself off at the root, unattached. You have to constantly find the balance between staying true to your nature and questioning it.

I looked up at the kite, now soaring high above me. I saw my spirit fly there, a tiny shape against a mass of sky, bound to me by my will, stretched out against my hands. Create tension. Creation of liberation.

www.lightning-bug.bandcamp.com

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